The man who delivered an historic “No” vote in Ireland against the EU’s Lisbon Treaty has revealed far-reaching plans to give voters throughout Europe a peoples’ referendum on the handover of power to Brussels.

Declan Ganley is planning to field more than 400 candidates in next June’s European Parliament elections, in the 26 countries – including Britain – where voters have had no direct say on the treaty.

The energy and rhetoric of Mr Ganley, a multimillionaire businessman, was widely credited with persuading the Irish to reject the treaty, even though every leading Irish political party apart from Sinn Fein was urging voters to say “Yes”.

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Now he wants to give British voters a chance to deliver a bloody nose to both the Brussels establishment and to Gordon Brown, whose party first promised and then refused a referendum in Britain.

In an interview with The Sunday Telegraph, Mr Ganley disclosed that he was starting to raise £75 million from online donations to run candidates in all 12 of Britain’s European Parliament constituencies, and in seats throughout the EU.

He will turn his pressure group, Libertas, into a party with just one policy: to fight the Lisbon Treaty, which many see as the rejected European Constitution by the back door.